Ebdon
is not a fast player but he did not grind. He played super positive snooker and
it worked. His pace, though, has an undoubted effect on his opponents.
Robertson, as ever, took the positives: “anyone else would have lost 6-3,” he
said.

Ebdon
now plays Ding Junhui, the man in form, who put Matthew Stevens to the sword
6-1 in their quarter-final. But Ding will be expecting a much tougher challenge
from a much harder player.

Every
few years Ebdon seems to dig deep into his well of reserves and find something
despite having no real form coming into a tournament. He did so at the China
Opens of 2009 and 2012. So far in Chengdu this week he has done so again.

I’ve
been impressed all week with Marco Fu. He is striking the ball really sweetly,
has made a string of big breaks and looks fully confident. He had to wait six
years between winning his first and second world ranking titles. Perhaps the
wait for title no.3 will not be as long.

Little
has been seen of Mark Selby on the TV table but he has made quiet progress
through while some of the big beasts were making their exits on the TV tables.

He
can’t replace Robertson as world no.1 this week but he can eat into the
Australian’s lead at the head of the list.

Joe
Perry was 5-1 down to Jamie Jones in the first round but won 6-5 and is now a
quarter-finalist. He plays Ryan Day who, like Perry, is one of those players
many feel would have won a ranking title by now without quite doing it.

Graeme
Dott has come out of the pack relatively unnoticed and now plays Liang Wenbo,
who followed up his defeat of Ronnie O’Sullivan with a 6-1 thumping of a well
below par Mark Davis.

All
eight quarter-finalists have been ranking event finalists and five of them have
won ranking titles.